shallow is probably the wrong word. Recent is more literal

2D otaku culture is still a pretty new phenomenon relatively speaking. It's not like, say, stamp collecting which has existed for much longer.

only shallow

Otaku are all about cunny and cunny is shallow so I see nothing strange about that.

"Otaku" in Japan is roughly equivalent to "nerd/geek" in the West. Nerds with obsessive interests have always existed through history, but they're more common today obviously, for numerous reasons related to society that are too many to list. Before the advent of the internet they couldn't really communicate with each other, leaving them very alone and isolated. They were forced to conform and become norms or commit sudoku.

But if you mean anime/manga/VN/etc otaku, then yes, they're a relatively recent phenomenon similar to videogame nerds. Both of these type of nerds weren't common before the 80s. You can maybe make a parallel with 2D otaku as people who were infatuated with paintings, sculptures, etc and videogame nerds with tabletop nerds though.

>>129452
They just wrote letters and formed societies. Pretty much any social function the internet provides can be replicated locally with a small amount of effort.

>>129453
It was harder to "find each other" without the internet though. How is a shut in nerd going to receive a latter from another one? And you can't really form a community that way. You have to physically go to a place.

>>129454
Shut-ins != nerds
You are moving the goalposts.

>>129455
That's what I meant when I said "They were forced to conform and become norms or commit sudoku". Perhaps the only exception to this would be hermits, monks and other ascetic lifestyles associated with religion.

Ehhhhh? It's not something I can pretend to care about, really. It doesn't really matter if it's 5000 years old or 50 years old. It doesn't make it shallow or any less meaningful. Itt might even make it even cooler!

>>129458
I have a story about this and I'm going to show my age. But it's relevant.

In the long long ago (before 9/11) an unfortunate woman decided to follow her dream of living in America by signing up for what I assume is the Japanese version of the JET program. She worked really hard at becoming mostly fluent in English by going to school for 4 years and majoring in the language at whatever college. Then she signed up to work for less than minimum wage and was flown to the other side of the world. She was expecting to experience NYC, SF, LA or another large famous American city and live there for a few years. Instead they sent her to the asshole of America. To a state that ranked 50th overall in the public schooling system. To an area in that state where she was 100+ miles away from anything.

But she took confront in the fact that at least she'd be teaching kids that were probably interested in Japan's culture. Kids that wanted to better themselves and learn of things like the samurai of old, Edo Japan, the Sengoku period, Shinto, cherry blossoms, festivals and holidays and all those other wonderful things you loved about her native land.

Sadly, within a few months of arriving and before she even got to teach her first class two things happened in America; Pokemon mania and the cartoon network airing of Dragon Ball Z.

She showed up to her first day on the job to a class room filled with kids wearing Goku and Pikachu t-shirts. She asked them if they had any questions about Japan and all they wanted to know is was the Pikablu rumor true and when was <x> game coming out on Playstation. We know you get them early. Don't lie to us!

To this day I've never seen someone so disappointed and depressed in my life. A few of the kids were already what you might consider true otaku. They were the lucky ones with access to broadband. They were selling bootleg copies of Japanese media on CD-Rs and VHS. She might have taken one of them aside and told them something along the lines of
>You don't want to watch and play that stuff. It'll ruin your life.

She wasn't wrong! Sweet woman. Only teacher I had that ever cared. Caught me smoking one time and made me feel 2 inches tall. She scolded me like the mother I never had and didn't turn me in. She really cared about her students. But most of her students didn't do anything but poke fun at her thick accent and try to skate by through pretending they weren't learning anything because she couldn't speak English well enough.

If I had a time machine I would go back and apply myself more just in the hopes that it would make her feel a little better. She only made it a couple of years. Once her contract was up she ran back to Japan and never returned. I doubt she ever visited America again.

I think back on how she was treated and I feel great shame. I can't believe how cruel kids can really be.

My point is she fucking HATED otaku. Didn't matter what kind of otaku you were. She said otakus were creepy and would never amount to anything in their lives. From talking to her about this subject a bit I gathered that the average Japanese person back then (and probably now) does not care for otaku one bit and considers them the scum of their society. She also wasn't a fan of attempts to pass of AMV as end of year project on "Japanese culture". She gave me a pity A though.

>>129537
>You don't want to watch and play that stuff. It'll ruin your life.
>My point is she fucking HATED otaku. Didn't matter what kind of otaku you were. She said otakus were creepy and would never amount to anything in their lives.
This just sounds like she was projecting her Japanese sensibilities of needing to be like everyone else onto some kids who were (presumably) passionate about their hobbies.

If my student submitted a Lincoln Park Nardo vs. Saucegay AMV as a school project, I'd tell them to rethink their life as well.

>>129452
I disagree, our world was built by eccentric weirdos with obsessive interests. That's basically where science came from and it's what the renaissance was as well.
The renaissance was pretty much just a primitive version of western Otaku culture but focusing on the ancient world instead of on Japan.

>>129537
>My point is she fucking HATED otaku. Didn't matter what kind of otaku you were. She said otakus were creepy and would never amount to anything in their lives. From talking to her about this subject a bit I gathered that the average Japanese person back then (and probably now) does not care for otaku one bit and considers them the scum of their society. She also wasn't a fan of attempts to pass of AMV as end of year project on "Japanese culture". She gave me a pity A though.

You may already know this but in her day the word Otaku was associated with the then very recent case of the "Otaku" child murderer; he killed 4 of them in cruel ways.
So she probably knee jerked in the way that women today would when they think of the word maidenless or brony or whatever.

>>129537
She seems to be overreacting and it seems to be an individual thing rather than a societal thing.

As an example of that, I'm Australian and my dad was quiet strict on things like that and had very negative views on video games, cartoons or anything like that. He wouldn't even let me watch the Simpsons. He's not a religious nut job by the way either, he's an atheist. He's just very spartan.
But that's not an Australian thing, that's just a him thing.

>>129557
don't make fun of saucegay

>>129537
>>129686
Yeah, sounds like she was just a curmudgeon overreacting to it like old people also did to videogames back then because of Columbine.

>>129537
I want to add to this. Otaku were resented for other reasons too, but I think I'd be upset too if all people cared about concerning my culture was the geeky, dorky, media aspects of it. I get why some otaku were so forceful in showing their 'otakuness' in public, they wanted to be seen as normal (or more so harmless) people who were really in their hobbies. However, as time showed, their was a downside to that. Now you have tons of autists running around who have little to no social intelligence and their whole entire identity revolves around their clique, their fandom, their in-group. This comes off as very obnoxious, disrespectuful, and self-centered, so it's no wonder that people are put off by such anti-social behaviors. There must be a balance, or rather, a level of constraint, regulation. Keep your hobbies to yourself mostly. Trust me, I make a comment on this because when I was a teenager, I couldn't shut up about my hobbies (I remember talking about eroge to one guy that just finished playing Persona as if it were a normal thing, yes, that's how bad I was) and it made me look like a total sperg.

>>129775
Of course, being a Sonic-tier sperg like Chris Chan is bad, but there's nothing wrong about being passionate about your interests. It only becomes a problem when it becomes a drug-like addiction that seriously impairs your quality of life, and I'd argue it's almost impossible to get addicted to anime/manga. Things like the internet, videogames/gacha, etc are a much bigger issue. 2D otaku aren't really addicted to anime/manga itself, but rather to the culture surrounding it; which includes the internet, consumerism, videogames, etc. Having a spending addiction is definitely not limited to anime/manga, and it's the only real harmful aspect directly associated with it. I fully admit I have an internet addiction, but it's still better than being addicted to drugs, tobacco and alcohol like so many older people were before, but is now steadily going down in younger generations. Being a nerd who doesn't go out does have the benefits of remaining drug free for the most part and away from STD-transmitting 3DPD.

I think this most recent conversation is a generational thing, although calling it generational is a bit inaccurate since people usually refer to that by age when it's not necessarily the case here. Obviously I'm going to generalize about Japanese stuff since I'm not actually one of them, but I have read stuff now and then and of course see references occasionally.
Being an otaku/nerd was definitely not cool and something you would generally hide. With otaku being a pejorative, especially after the aforementioned otaku killer thing, it seemed better to hide your predilections unless you know you're among your own kin. Not only will it avoid harsh judgements from strangers, but it will prevent you from creating awkward social situations. From what I've seen Japan is great at accepting that people can be weirdos in private, but being one in public is heavily frowned upon. This is also the case outside of Japan, but I don't think it ever reaches the degrees of tolerance for fantasy in private and intolerance towards straying from the social code in public.
Sometimes it seems strange to me that people can't understand that otaku was a bad thing to be called, just like being called a nerd or a geek was a bad thing to be. I think it's a modern internet thing where such terms have been "reclaimed" (watered down) as something you can put on your status page without elaboration, so such words carrying weight is a bit unusual if not incomprehensible.
On the English imageboard side of things people called it "powerlevel" and while it sounded funny, most people had the understanding that it was a form of protection not just for the individual but for the group as well. You can see this in older internet stuff when someone shares a clip of someone violating this safety net (like on local TV news or a college presentation or something) and people have trouble watching it because they feel empathetic shame and even anger at the person for doing it. As >>129775 said restraint is a force for good and it's important to keep society functioning... probably.
Maybe this is a bit of a moot point now since the algorithm will expose and destroy everything we hold dear until it moves on to the next thing tomorrow.

>>129557
I submitted it because I was lazy. But in my defense the project was supposed to be about video editing. I didn't download someone else's shit and try to pass it off as my own. I actually sat down and took the time to edit something from VHS tapes I'd captured. But I didn't think things through and she forced me to show it to the class as punishment. She won in the end.

>>129686
That's part of the reason why she didn't like them. But the hate for Otaku was already pretty widespread by then. Plus the meaning of Otaku has kind of changed since then in the west. It's was closer to "geek" back then. Trust me geeks were hated, shamed and shit on even in the west back then. This geeky stuff becoming cool didn't happen until much later.

>>129766
Columbine wouldn't happen for another year or so at that time. We were still allowed to bring fake guns to school back then. Used to build models of them in art class for fun and shoot them at each other. The knee-jerk reaction to Columbine was fast and swift. They tried to force us all to buy new backbacks that were see through. Most fell in line but after a month or two they gave up on that. The clear plastic ones were crap and the mesh ones fell apart within a month.

Anyway, the violence in gaming thing had already been going strong for years at that point thanks to the Mortal Kombat and DOOM stuff being a hot button issue in Congress.

>>129775
>I want to add to this. Otaku were resented for other reasons too, but I think I'd be upset too if all people cared about concerning my culture was the geeky, dorky, media aspects of it.

It was exactly this. She wanted to teach us about her culture. She ended up getting every geek/otaku in the school for her two classes. She didn't get enough students to fill more than two periods. Which is why the school dropped the Japanese language classes pretty quickly. I was shocked we even had it as an option at that time.

We were forced to take a second language class starting sometime in the mid-90s. Most people took Spanish. The only other option for a long time was French. Then they added Latin and Japanese for awhile with these two overseas teachers they somehow managed to obtain for less than minimum wage.

If I was working for a slave wage and all my students only cared about anime, video games and media I'd burn out quickly to. Never mind the fact that kids were openly mocking her in the hallways by doing things like making chink eyes at her and saying things like "me so horny!" and calling her Jap to her face. I'm surprised she lasted as long as she did.

She actually offered to take two students on her own dime to Japan to live with her family for the summer provided they got all As for the entire four year course she'd laid out. Sadly, she left before anyone could go. I know it lit a fire under at least a few of the students because once she laid down that offer a bunch of us started doing homework. Part of the deal was you had to maintain an above B average over all your classes. I got my grades up because of it. But then some medical stuff happened in my life and I ended up not finishing high school. I only obtained a diploma at age 20 since I was forced to take several years off from school/work to recover. She was long gone by that point anyway.

>>129818
Oh I also remember now she wasn't angry that I'd chosen to do an end of year project about anime/media itself. She was mostly upset because I didn't go into enough detail about the people producing and working on it. Basically, she wanted an essay about animators, seiyuus, production companies, history of them and that sort of thing. But I basically had tried to pass off a collection of fansubs and a kuso AMV because I was lazy and already had a lot of that stuff laying around anyway. I tossed that project together in 3 or 4 hours at the last minute.

In my defense my work load was pretty unbearable back then. My parents and grandparents really didn't care for the school since it was pretty useless anyway. I only got to focus on studies after I'd done all my work around the farm everyday. Which barely left me an hour or two a night if I was lucky. I couldn't stay up late that often to focus on studies because I was up at 4-5am every morning 7 days a week to do the daily chores I was assigned. I was expected to get a bunch of stuff done before the bus showed up to pick me up around 8am. I was also expected to work on Saturday and Sunday to make up for the fact that I wasn't around to help on weekdays outside of summer.

Probably why she took pity on me. Since she was aware of my home life. She took more interest in her students than any other teacher I ever had. She once showed up to our farm randomly just to check on me because I'd been out of class for a couple of days. My Grandfather would often force me to lay out of school when the work load got heavy since it was all hands on deck during those times.

>>129794
>Being a nerd who doesn't go out does have the benefits of remaining drug free for the most part and away from STD-transmitting 3DPD.
I'll certainly agree with you on that, lol.
>>129816
>Maybe this is a bit of a moot point now since the algorithm will expose and destroy everything we hold dear until it moves on to the next thing tomorrow.
I'd wish the algorithm would hurry it up dammit, I want most of these people out of my hobbies. They have invaded all of them.

>>129819
>an essay about animators, seiyuus, production companies, history of them and that sort of thing
Sounds like a lot of work to me. More evidence that kids are getting dumber each generation.